Over the past decade, wireless mobile stations have become increasingly important in the everyday activities of many people and, for some, life without a cellular telephone would be very difficult. The importance of wireless mobile stations has not been lost on companies in the telecommunications industry who are continuing to improve their product and service offerings. For example, a number of manufacturers now provide wireless communication devices which also enable a user to access the Internet and manage personal information, including contact names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and other valuable information. As a consequence, the term “wireless mobile station” which has been thought of in the past to include, generally, wireless voice communication devices such as radio or cellular telephones (analog or digital) must now be thought of as including a wider variety of wireless devices which communicate voice and/or data, and which may provide a user with additional functionality as well.
In order to meet the volume of data which must be reliably communicated to and from such wireless mobile stations, various standards bodies are formulating new third generation (3G) standards which support higher data rates. For example, standards organizations such as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the Association of Radio Industries and Broadcasting (ARIB) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) are developing new standards to support faster and more efficient wireless communications. Similarly, manufacturers and service providers are working diligently to improve the data communication capabilities of their systems by developing and implementing new wireless communication protocols (or improving on old wireless communication protocols) to provide faster, more robust, and more efficient data communications over-the-air. Many such protocols employ time division duplex (TDD) or frequency division duplex (FDD) modes alone, or in combination. For instance, the general packet radio service (GPRS) protocol has been developed as a packet-switched upgrade for time division multiple access (TDMA) systems. GPRS utilizes TDD and FDD modes in combination. Other improvements include the development of the enhanced GPRS (referred to as “EGPRS”) protocol (i.e., which also uses TDD and FDD modes in combination), and may soon include the use of a universal mobile telecommunications systems time division duplex (UMTS TDD) mode to support asymmetrical spectrum allocation and asymmetrical traffic. While this new development may possibly lead to improvements in the data handling capacities of wireless communication systems, there remains the possibility that improvements may not be sufficient enough or may not be deployable soon enough to timely address the growing need for increased data handling capacity.
There is, therefore, a need for methods and/or apparatuses that utilize the existing capacity of wireless communication systems more efficiently to provide data communications for half duplex mobile stations.